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The Exquisite Corpse, with its gridded repetitions and transitional visual elements would then be an example of a ‘smooth’ form, which moves through ‘striated’ gridded space. In their essay “1440: The Smooth and the Striated”, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari discuss these notions of the ‘smooth’ and the ‘striated’ space:
The striated is that which intertwines fixed and variable elements, produces an order and succession of distinct forms, and organizes horizontal melodic lines and vertical harmonic planes. The smooth is continuous variation, continuous development of form; it is the fusion of harmony and melody in favour of the production of properly rhythmic values. (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, p.528)
Deleuze and Guattari examine these ideas of ‘smooth’ and ‘striation’ in relation to the patchwork quilt, which, like the Exquisite Corpse, consists of repetitions in structure (striation) and continuous variation in its visual elements (smoothness). The patchwork quilt is made up of material fragments that vary in size, shape, colour, pattern and texture. These juxtaposing elements are sewn together to form a square, which is then stitched to other opposing squares to form a grid. As Rico Franses explains: ‘it appears that the vast majority of quilts evidence a careful play between order and random “unstructure.” Straight lines and squares often lurk beneath the visual turbulence above’ (Franses, 1996, p.316). Like the Exquisite Corpse, the quilt has no center or hierarchical order; each square has the same value as the next. The grid spatially organizes and structurally frames the material fragments, but as the quilt maker keeps adding more and more squares to the extending grid, there is also clear potential in the quilt for infinite spatial expansion. As Rico Franses again explains: ‘It is the endless nature of the grid that allows simultaneously for a framing function of individual units (the squares), and the infinite replication of these, which leads not to chaos but to boundless structure’ (Franses, 1996, p.259). Like the Exquisite Corpse then, the patchwork quilt is both framed and frameless. The grid is the necessary ordering mechanism of these procedural activities, which structures a ‘dynamic tension’ between order and disorder and ‘rules and transgression’ (Kern, 2009, p.5).
Barnes, N. (1900-1920) Crazy Quilt.